The Maharashtra government plans to cap the cost of RT-PCR tests for the novel coronavirus at private laboratories at ₹1,200.
On Saturday, August 29, Health Minister Rajesh Tope, stated that he plans on bringing down the costs for the coronavirus tests to approximately ₹1,200 to ₹1,500 at the maximum.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had earlier removed the cap of ₹4,500 for conducting coronavirus tests and had asked the states to “fix up mutually agreeable prices”. According to the new norms, RT-PCR tests for the coronavirus were capped at ₹2,200 while the tests which collected samples from home had a sealing price of ₹2,800.
In the past, the city of Mumbai had three rate cards. The tests were being done free of charge at public laboratories, ₹4500 at private laboratories and ₹3,500 that the BMC was paying the private facilities when it was collecting samples of high-risk contacts in-home quarantine.
Maharashtra, as a result of having the most number of cases, has been conducting a large number of tests. It has been conducting 29,043 tests per million of the population, as against the country’s average testing of 27,553.
Tope further added that the state would keep on increasing the number of tests that are being conducted every day for COVID-19 adding that Mumbai and Thane have jointly developed an RT-PCR testing kit recently. Moreover, the ICMR and the National Institute of Virology has approved their product. This, in turn, can help the conduct more testing efficiently to curb the surge in cases.